Hunter-gatherers were the original affluent society

[SanteriSatama]

New Materialist work is really fascinating. I haven't yet been able to sink my teeth into much of it, but I'd like to. I've kinda been poking at Deleuze recently and his ontology, and I'm finding it gripping, but I'm having to come at it a little sideways 'cause I find the key texts themselves difficult to wrap my head around.

I checked the wiki on Deleuze. The ontological primacy of differences to identities seems very similar (in it's unique difference!) to Buddhist philosophy of anatman.

I thought the same thing when I was reading some overviews of him. I know he also drew heavily on Whitehead (although I'm starting to think everyone interesting since Whitehead has drawn on Whitehead).

French philosophers talk mainly to each other in their own tradition of philosophical jargon, which can be pretty dense. But not less so than the jargon of analytical philosophy, etc.

You aren't wrong, and Deleuze is a special case even among French philosophers. Nevertheless, the little bit of his thought I've been able to grasp -- the rhizome, the virtual, difference, desire -- I've found gripping. So far, I'm finding a lot of my intuitions reflected in his thought, and I'm hoping to read A Thousand Plateaus and Difference and Repetition myself at some point, but I feel like I need to have grappled at a much deeper level than I have so far with a lot of the philosophical traditions he himself is engaging with: Freud/Lacan, Derrida, Whitehead, Spinoza.

I haven't read Deleuze, but metaphysics of process philosophical Unique - which sort of came from Ayahuasca - is very close to Deleuze (at least based on wiki).

I've been also developing foundations of mathematics based on more-less relation and relational operators < > as the mathematical aspect of the ontology we've called here 'Divinely Integrated Differentiation'.

[DandelionSoul]

I haven't read Deleuze, but metaphysics of process philosophical Unique - which sort of came from Ayahuasca - is very close to Deleuze (at least based on wiki).

I'd love to read more about your Ayahuasca-inspired process philosophy. Have you written it up anywhere?

I've been also developing foundations of mathematics based on more-less relation and relational operators < > as the mathematical aspect of the ontology we've called here 'Divinely Integrated Differentiation'.

That sounds both fascinating and entirely over my head.

[Soul_of_Shu]

As far as one can tell, Nature has never precluded an overflowing abundance of novelty—indeed, if anything, it seems to preference it, even at the cost of copious extinctions, with its human expression now having taken this proclivity to a metacognitive extreme. If there is any scarcity, it's surely not of Mind's ideation.

[DandelionSoul]

As far as one can tell, Nature has never precluded an overflowing abundance of novelty—indeed, if anything, it seems to preference it, even at the cost of copious extinctions, with its human expression now having taken this proclivity to a metacognitive extreme. If there is any scarcity, it's surely not of Mind's ideation.

Absolutely. I'm sure I'll end up deep-diving into this in the dialogue I'm having with Ashvin in the other thread, but this is a big part of why I don't consider myself a monist.

[JustinG]

As far as one can tell, Nature has never precluded an overflowing abundance of novelty—indeed, if anything, it seems to preference it, even at the cost of copious extinctions, with its human expression now having taken this proclivity to a metacognitive extreme. If there is any scarcity, it's surely not of Mind's ideation.

And indigenous fire management may be as much a way of listening to and becoming attuned with the ideation of Mind as 'heady' practices such as philosophizing, prayer, meditation or taking psychedelics. E.g (from https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol25/iss4/art11/):

'..for many Indigenous peoples, the use of fire is based on a reciprocal relationship between the individual and the universe (Eriksen and Hankins 2014). Many Indigenous worldviews believe the Earth is a generative, living being, and that humans and all living beings are interconnected (Kidwell et al. 2002). As oral knowledge is important to Indigenous societies (Berkes 1999), fire knowledge, of when and how to use fire on the landscape, is often found in people’s stories. These stories set out various “laws of the land” (Eriksen and Hankins 2014), for the responsibility of fire as a management tool and often incorporate the intrinsic value of nature, the potential for the landscape to be alive or sentient, and the spiritual dimensions of the land (Fernández-Llamazares and Cabeza 2018, Nikolakis et al. 2020). Fire is viewed by many Indigenous societies as a source of renewal, and burning cleans the landscape (Yibarbuk et al. 2001)...
Fire knowledge is epistemologically rooted in a connection to place (Robinson et al. 2016). Fire management can be a spiritual ceremony, grounded in local stories or legends (Davidson-Hunt and Berkes 2003, Miller et al. 2010, Christianson et al. 2014, Norgaard 2014). IFM emphasizes a reciprocal relationship with the land, and a strong nexus between individual and landscape health (Eriksen and Hankins 2014, Gratani et al. 2016). Under Indigenous epistemologies, the land often guides human action, while Western approaches are typically guided by politics, science, and economic incentives."

[Jim Cross]

Burning, not burning out. It's a practice among certain Indigenous groups in the US, too:

Let's not overly romanticize it. Just because it is controlled and done with intention doesn't mean it didn't cause significant alteration to the environment. If you want to claim this is somehow natural, then where do you want to draw the line? Why wouldn't burning down the rainforest to plant pastures also be natural?

[Soul_of_Shu]

As far as one can tell, Nature has never precluded an overflowing abundance of novelty—indeed, if anything, it seems to preference it, even at the cost of copious extinctions, with its human expression now having taken this proclivity to a metacognitive extreme. If there is any scarcity, it's surely not of Mind's ideation.

And indigenous fire management may be as much a way of listening to and becoming attuned with the ideation of Mind as 'heady' practices such as philosophizing, prayer, meditation or taking psychedelics. E.g (from https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol25/iss4/art11/):

'..for many Indigenous peoples, the use of fire is based on a reciprocal relationship between the individual and the universe (Eriksen and Hankins 2014). Many Indigenous worldviews believe the Earth is a generative, living being, and that humans and all living beings are interconnected (Kidwell et al. 2002). As oral knowledge is important to Indigenous societies (Berkes 1999), fire knowledge, of when and how to use fire on the landscape, is often found in people’s stories. These stories set out various “laws of the land” (Eriksen and Hankins 2014), for the responsibility of fire as a management tool and often incorporate the intrinsic value of nature, the potential for the landscape to be alive or sentient, and the spiritual dimensions of the land (Fernández-Llamazares and Cabeza 2018, Nikolakis et al. 2020). Fire is viewed by many Indigenous societies as a source of renewal, and burning cleans the landscape (Yibarbuk et al. 2001)...
Fire knowledge is epistemologically rooted in a connection to place (Robinson et al. 2016). Fire management can be a spiritual ceremony, grounded in local stories or legends (Davidson-Hunt and Berkes 2003, Miller et al. 2010, Christianson et al. 2014, Norgaard 2014). IFM emphasizes a reciprocal relationship with the land, and a strong nexus between individual and landscape health (Eriksen and Hankins 2014, Gratani et al. 2016). Under Indigenous epistemologies, the land often guides human action, while Western approaches are typically guided by politics, science, and economic incentives."

For sure, forest renewal by way of fire is nothing new to Nature, using lightening strikes and volcanoes long before any intervention by way of its metacognitive human expression, which is still clearly an idea construction in progress, perhaps yet to go the way of the dinosaur idea

[SanteriSatama]

I'd love to read more about your Ayahuasca-inspired process philosophy. Have you written it up anywhere?

All is valuable. Inherently valuable by being unique - each experience, each form, each life story, etc..

'Being Unique' is another, complementary way of singing in the "single voice" of differentiation, as Deleuze expresses the Spinozan aspect of his philosophy.

That sounds both fascinating and entirely over my head.

It's not very complicated. We don't start mathematics from postulating a unit, an object - the metaphysical idea of number -, but from continuous relating.
Instead of postulating Law of Identity as a metaphysical axiom, equivalence relations of mathematical identities can be derived from difference algorithm of more-less relation and it's temporal negation:

If A is neither more nor less than B, then A=B.

Naturally, such equivalence relations are context dependent, depending on chosen metric etc. For example, in the metric of integers, we can have 1, 0 and -1. The inverval from 1 to -1 is both more and less than 0. If we want to combine 1 and -1, that happens by the measurement of those numbers moving towards each other, until they meat where they are neither more nor less in relation to each other, at 0. Hence 1 - 1 = 0 (in the metric of integers.)

[Jim Cross]

The most significant type of environmental change brought about by Precolumbian human activity was the modification of vegetation. [...] Vegetation was primarily altered by the clearing of forest and by intentional burning. Natural fires certainly occurred but varied in frequency and strength in different habitats. Anthropogenic fires, for which there is ample documentation, tended to be more frequent but weaker, with a different seasonality than natural fires, and thus had a different type of influence on vegetation. The result of clearing and burning was, in many regions, the conversion of forest to grassland, savanna, scrub, open woodland, and forest with grassy openings. (William M. Denevan)[

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Am ... ecosystems

[DandelionSoul]

All is valuable. Inherently valuable by being unique - each experience, each form, each life story, etc..

'Being Unique' is another, complementary way of singing in the "single voice" of differentiation, as Deleuze expresses the Spinozan aspect of his philosophy.

We are absolutely in agreement here. ^_^

It's not very complicated. We don't start mathematics from postulating a unit, an object - the metaphysical idea of number -, but from continuous relating.
Instead of postulating Law of Identity as a metaphysical axiom, equivalence relations of mathematical identities can be derived from difference algorithm of more-less relation and it's temporal negation:

If A is neither more nor less than B, then A=B.

Naturally, such equivalence relations are context dependent, depending on chosen metric etc. For example, in the metric of integers, we can have 1, 0 and -1. The inverval from 1 to -1 is both more and less than 0. If we want to combine 1 and -1, that happens by the measurement of those numbers moving towards each other, until they meat where they are neither more nor less in relation to each other, at 0. Hence 1 - 1 = 0 (in the metric of integers.)

Oh! I followed that! Thank you!